I worry about America ... a LOT. We have become so removed from our heritage, our history, and the core values upon which this country was founded that we have lost our way and we are foundering and in real danger of collapse.

Our culture is now so crude, so repellent, AND repugnant, that the good people of Sodom and Gomorrah would blush -- were they to see us today.

America has become the sort of country to which WE (America) used to send missionaries!

There IS a struggle in progress for America -- but the soul of the country has long been lost. Nothing much is left today but a hollowed-out husk of a nation that once led the world from the pinnacle of power and influence. Like the Roman Empire, America died at its own hand.

All we have left today are memories of a time of grandeur. And even those pictures from the past are fading into nothingness.

And it was quick. Oh, how swiftly we succumbed to the assault on our foundation. We thought it was solid -- built on granite of the ages -- only to learn that it wasn't granite, it was, in fact, sand, a house built on sand. And like that proverbial house, it was swept away by our own avarice, our own covetousness, our own selfishness, laziness, our inability to grasp the obvious, which was simply -- that America had chosen the lap of luxury over the eternal fight for freedom. Added to all the above was the loss of American's will to preserve the most precious gift their ancestors had to give -- freedom and liberty.

When Americans finally reached a point in the evolution of the country that they no longer VALUED freedom, the fate of the country was sealed.

America's founders knew -- and understood fully -- that freedom is not free. It exacts a price. It is bought, over, and over again, with blood. It can be obtained no other way. Blood is the ONLY acceptable currency when purchasing one's freedom. A people simply GIVEN freedom do not value it. They cannot -- for the know nothing of its cost. And they soon lose it. Freedom once lost is almost never regained.

Once a people have acquired their freedom -- it must be maintained. It, too, requires blood payment. Even more important is the fact that to maintain one's freedom WILL is required. A people must have the will to do that which is necessary to maintain their freedom -- or they will most certainly lose it.

Americans used to take pride in the expression: "It's a free country." You don't hear that much anymore. Because we are not a free country -- anymore.

The state America finds herself in today is the culmination of a process that was begun many decades ago to slowly distance Americans from their birthright. Yes, freedom is, or at least WAS, a birthright of modern Americans. It was bought and paid for by the men and women we are supposed to be remembering on this Memorial Day.

G. K. Chesterton once said: "The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost." America has had at least two generations without the realization that "freedom" MIGHT be, or COULD be, lost. They were the low hanging fruit for the leftist/globalist/multiculturalist agenda that has so successfully stripped America of its liberty.

So, how do you go about separating a people, a nation from its heritage, its history, and its core values? Consider the following words carefully: "The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history, Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster ..." ......- Milan Kundera

Mr. Kundera was spot-on. Today we use the word "revisionist" to describe the process he lays out above. And it is absolutely effective.

We have a generation of Americans who haven't a clue WHO they are. They have been taught that American culture is no better or worse than the culture of any other nation on earth. "multiculturalism" has been force-fed our young scholars in the government controlled public education system in America. Their young minds were soaked in leftist propaganda for twelve years before they are delivered up to the masters of socialist and Marxist thought at the thresholds of the nation's colleges and universities we laughingly refer to as "institutions of higher learning." I submit, they are a lot of things, but institutions of higher learning they are not.

They no longer believe in American Exceptionalism. Even the American President denies the existence of an exceptional America pushing his own country from a leadership position in the world to just another member of the pack following ... WHOM or WHAT ... exactly?

Our young have been taught that the way to accomplish anything is to compromise. Even when you are right ... compromise.

Right never wins in compromise.

One of the greatest politicians ever produced by the state of North Carolina was Senator Jesse Helms. As far back as 1959, Mr. Helms said: "Compromise, hell! If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if were a roll of Bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?"

But that is precisely what America did. We compromised -- and we traded our freedom away. We made a Faustian deal and the bill has come due.

What happened to our reason and to our common sense? Regrettably, we traded and compromised it away, as well.

Our national memory? Almost gone. Does anyone even remember what Memorial Day is all about, anymore?

Memorial Day was a day originally set aside as a day to remember our war dead and to honor those men and women who fought in all the wars of the United States. Here, in the American South, we celebrate the Confederate dead as well as the US dead. After all, Memorial Day began as a Southern holiday to honor the Confederate dead by cleaning their grave sites and cemeteries.

No longer. Today we "celebrate" Memorial Day.

There is something fundamentally WRONG about that. Where's the quiet contemplation owed America's warrior's for their sacrifice. After all, Memorial Day, indeed, every day of freedom in America is a day bought and paid for in the blood of America's warriors. This calls for solemnity -- not celebration.

No, I don't expect anything to change as a result of my comments here. Unfortunately, we are too far down that slippery slope to ever climb back up. But -- it needed saying. A friend reminded me, a while ago, "someone needs to say these things." And now-- someone has.

J. D. Longstreet is a conservative “Carolina Boy.” A Southern American (A native sandlapper (South Carolinian) and an adopted Tar Heel -- A North Carolinian) with a deep passion for the history, heritage, and culture of the southern states of America. At the same time he is a deeply loyal American believing strongly in “America First.” J. D. Longstreet is a very proud direct descendent of several Confederate soldiers. He is a thirty-year veteran of the broadcasting business, as an “in the field” and “on-air” news reporter (contributing to radio, TV, and newspapers) and a conservative broadcast commentator. Longstreet is a veteran of the US Army and US Army Reserve. He is a member of the American Legion and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A lifelong Christian, Longstreet subscribes to “old Lutheranism” to express and exercise his faith.